It's been a while since I've last written and a lot, well in some ways a lot has happened. I've been on two more village visits, Beit Sahour and Ein Rafa. We went to Ein Rafa on the 9th around 4 pm. It's really close, only about fifteen to twenty minutes outside of Jerusalem, but it took us a while to get there because of traffic into the rotary by Abu Ghosh, an Arab town known for it's amazing hummus. It's where all of the secular Jews go on Shabbat to have lunch. Sounds kind of like what my family did on Christmas day, except we went to Dim Sum!
Ein Rafa was pretty great. We ran the clinic on an enclosed court with about fifteen kids to start off with. All of them were boys in the beginning ranging in ages from 7 to about 12/13. Towards the end, more kids showed up including some older boys and girls. By the end there were about 26 kids, which was pretty impressive. They were a rowdy bunch of kids- throwing frisbees everywhere, even kicking them like soccer balls sometimes, but they were good and seemed pretty into what we were doing with them. We set up two teams like we did in Be'er Tuvya to have some mini competitions and all of the kids really got into them. A couple times they all got down on one knee and made chanting sounds with gestures at the other side. It was their way of getting them pumped and riled up. This time around it was a little harder to communicate with them because I don't know any arabic and they didn't speak much english. The local coach and the area coordinator helped out, but when I was with them in smaller groups I found myself trying to show rather than tell them. It worked out in the end but it was a bit frustrating at times.
On the 14th we went into the West Bank to Beit Sahour, a Palestinian village with a large Christian population. It took us over an hour and fifteen minutes to get there on a trip that shouldn't have taken longer than 45 minutes because we made a wrong turn (miscommunication with the coordinator we were picking up) and got stuck in a really long line of traffic. The drive to the school led us through winding roads, up and down very steep hills- but that's the area for you. As soon as we arrived at the school, we were beckoned by the coach to come drink tea with him. Of course it was delicious and full of tons of sugar, but it was a nice little pick me up before starting our clinic. At this village visit there were more girls than boys. I think there were about 18 total kids and they were probably from 6-10th grade or so. A few older boys showed up later. The coach this time was extremely helpful, coming around showing the kids what to do, encouraging them- but then again he's the sports coach at the school in a program with about 100 kids. They girls were good- there were some who were more athletic than others but they all seemed to enjoy themselves immensely.
Other than village visits, I've done a little walking around and exploring, although I hope to do more of that in the next week. There are parts of Jerusalem I want to roam around and definitely other parts of the country. I think I'm going to head up to Akko, which is where the holiest place for the Bahai is, but is also apparently a pretty great place, and maybe a day trip up to tzfat.
Today I went into Tel Aviv for Ligat Cova 8, a HAT frisbee tournament for anyone who wants to sign up and pay. I got to Tel Aviv really early because I walked with Aliza and Hanan to the Reconstructionist Minyan downtown at HUC. Unfortunately I couldn't go to both that and the tournament, although I would've loved to go. The weather was spectacular today. Bright, sunny blue skies. 75 degrees. When I got to the fields where there were supposed to be frisbee players gathering, I was suprised to find what seemed to be a rugby tournament. I've never actually seen a rugby game played. I'm not going to lie, it's a bit weird. I finally spotted some lone discs floating here and there and found my way over to those who were gathering to play. Apparently someone is supposed to check that the fields are free but that someone forgot this time around. It ended up being ok. We made fields a little bit further down. There were 4 teams and each team played three games. We didn't win any of our games but we did tie for the spirit award. I just had a good time playing frisbee and hanging out with some cool people.
That's it for now. Hopefully I won't take so long to write another post!
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